


would Jesus strike me down if I should pray

by ninemoons42



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Inspired By Tumblr, Inspired by Music, Inspired by Real Events, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Tumblr Prompt, fanfiction as self-therapy, past abusive relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 14:02:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10968735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: It might sometimes be easy to run away from an abuser.It's never easy to run away from the pain of being abused.





	would Jesus strike me down if I should pray

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted to say this right at the start of the story: this is going to be a little bit more personal, and a little bit more grounded in my own version of reality [helter-skelter and unruly as it might be]. If at any point you feel uncomfortable because you can feel your own difficulties springing out at you, then please hit the back button, and take care of yourself. Don’t feel bad about clicking out of the story, if it gets to be mentally or emotionally too much.
> 
> [This Cowboy Song](https://youtu.be/_Zve2zrFbvs) \-- Sting + Orquesta Sinfónica de Chile, 2011

Screeching, wild and painful and jabbing at her temples, and she opened her eyes to grit and sharp edges in the corners, and her heart was pounding wildly and she was still holding herself rigid and frightened in her blankets.

Shivering even with one bare foot stuck in the soft-edges of a shaft of weak winter sunlight.

Heavy hand, heavy heart: and she swatted at the source of the screeching, and blessed silence fell after three attempts, after four -- and then she immediately reached for her phone again, anxiety starting to worm its persistent drumbeat into her heart, just to check that she hadn’t accidentally put the damned thing on snooze and she would have to be assaulted again.

She hadn’t.

And she was already feeling leaden, unmoored, and she was still in bed, and the sun was rising gently in its gray winter sky. The weight of her tears falling from the corners of her eyes. How large were the damp patches on the pillows? They weren’t even her pillows. This wasn’t even her room -- the kind protestations of the man who’d taken her in notwithstanding. 

(Two nights ago: all her boxes and bags piled around her knees and she didn’t feel protected even though she knew she’d gotten all of her things, even though she was certain she’d taken all the things that belonged to her and some that didn’t but by gods and skies above she had the right to them, the unalienable _right_ \-- and she’d shivered as she made herself press the little blue button on the cheerful red doorjamb. Eyes on the calligraphy next to the buzzer, sweeping angles and curves of silver on black paper: there was something calming about the curiously clear corners and the precise sharp stops, and maybe she might have found it soothing, if her heart hadn’t been jackrabbiting away in her chest, if her guts hadn’t still been heaving with pure irrational fear --

(Two nights ago: clutching this address on a piece of paper with agony making dishwater of her bowels, with all the thoughts in her brain dissolving into gnawing gray noise, with losing track of her money and her time and her sense of who she really was, with finality raging in her ears like “We are done” and “Get out” and “This is not your house” --

(Two nights ago: An exclamation behind the door and the brisk definite sweep of opening. Wide eyes, resolution glittering through, and a kind firm hand moving towards her, stopping just shy of her wrist: “Hello,” said that voice, as kind as those dark eyes. “Welcome. You’re Jyn Erso, right?”

(Two nights ago: Bodhi Rook, and the sort-of shelter he ran in the spare rooms and guest spaces of a falling-down mansion, seeming suspended between a horizon full of sharp-peaked mountains and a horizon of whispering restless sea. Winter winds riffling in through the windows of the room he’d shown her to, and a low-slung box piled with mattresses and pillows, a bed that was low to the floor. 

(Two nights ago: she felt grateful if she felt anything, but all she could say was a small and colorless “Thanks”. Not just for the hospitality and the murmured comments about breakfast in the morning and all the tea she could ever want or need, at most any time of the day. But also for the understanding in his eyes, hard-edged and unfathomable; and for the voice in the back of her head that seemed to cry out in protest because who could have hurt Bodhi Rook to make him understand what she was going through? Irrational. She knew nothing about him. He was only a name and an address and right now he was an offer of tea, he was a guest bedroom.)

She looked at her phone again. Unread messages. No phone calls. Her mother and her father, individually, asking her if she was all right. A handful of other friends. 

How could Ahsoka know? How could Leia and Shara and Evaan? All Jyn could remember was telling them, a message in the group chat: _He threw me out. I’m going to the address you gave me._ They had all been the “you” that had given her the address. They had all known of Bodhi Rook. 

Now Jyn knew of Bodhi Rook, too.

She forced herself to move. Forced herself to get up on her feet. Her world had ended two nights ago, but that was only her world: the rest of everything else was still moving around her. Was still, despite all her attempts at hiding and denial, out there, calling to her, and she couldn’t deny it. 

She’d made that much of a promise, at least.

Up from the blankets. Ice in the breeze that blew in through the last window she’d left open before she fell asleep, two nights ago. It was a curiously bracing thing, that sharp-winter bite in the air. It was not pain: it was only a piece of the world. 

She could respond to it. 

There was enough space in here that she could respond to it and not have to move anything out of the way.

And with her hands and her heart empty, cored out, gouged out, she did: the nimble sweep and slash of her fists and her feet moving through the air, the weapon forms and the kicking forms alternating. No batons or truncheons in her hands, just moving like she was clutching desperately to them. Bare feet, unprotected, unshod, just carving through the morning chill, lethal and swift. 

Form one, form two, form three, form four. Her teachers had always advised her to rest between forms, but the pain that was still jittering up and down her nerves drove her past that: slash and slash and slash again, form after form. She was the weapon. She was the movement. She could lose herself and find herself at the same time, as she kicked and as she swung and -- 

Floorboards, creaking.

Jyn fell out of her forms, and she was poised to dive back into the bed and hide.

“Sorry,” said a voice on the other side of the door.

And she stared at the unmoving doorknob for a very long moment. Shock, razor-edged, running quicksilver through her skin.

“It’s me.”

Her ears had to be playing tricks on her.

He wasn’t here. 

This was a joke, this was a cruel prank -- she had to know for sure -- she had to be prepared for everything and especially prepared for the worst.

So Jyn tiptoed to the door. Braced herself at the correct angle. If the door got pushed in suddenly, she’d be protected by the full width of the painted wood. She’d have time to smash the door back on the same path, maybe knock out whoever it was, if whoever it was was only going to play tricks on her. Hurt her. Shame her. Cut her down. She’d have time to run for her life again.

All of that in the next three seconds.

She thought, and thought, and she made herself say: “Prove it.”

This was the part where the hard words came. The patronizing and the mostly veiled insults. She ought to be grateful; she ought to serve. She was so lucky to have been noticed and so lucky to have been loved by one such as -- that man.

She shook her head against the very sounds and syllables of that man’s name, and she knew she was shaking from head to toe, waiting for the pain and for the response from the other side of the door --

Suddenly: singing. No, not a song. A quiet hum from outside. Low to the floor.

The words rose, just a little garbled, to her lips:

_I’ve been the lowest of the low on the planet_  
_I’ve been a sinner all my days_  
_When I was living with my hand on the trigger_  
_I had no sense to change my ways_

Soft laughter interrupted the melody on the other side. Soft, but not unkind. Soft, and gently amused, not to laugh at her. An invitation for her to laugh _with_ the speaker. “You always did want to sing that part first.”

“It’s true.” The words fell from her, as she fell to her knees. Hands braced on the wall.

A pause in the song. 

A quiet movement, like rustling, like the scrape of skin feeling out the contours of wood. “Senseless and sinners? Yes, that part is true, but not -- not completely.”

More words. She should have been shocked. The truths that came out of her had been used against her so often. “He told me to leave, and it was my house too, my bed -- and I wanted to run but if I had stayed, if I had gone mad -- ” 

She choked on the next words.

And from the other side of the wall: “You can tell me if you like, and you can, you can not-tell me if you like.”

“Don’t hurt me,” she said, instinctively. “Don’t hate me.”

“I would never hurt you. Not intentionally.”

So she whispered, “I wanted to go mad so I could kill him.”

The song stilled. The notes, the humming, were swallowed by silence.

Jyn began to cry again, soundless and beaten down and worn out.

And she hated that she was crying again, that she couldn’t control herself, that she was so alone -- 

The knock on the door was very quiet. “Please let me in. Please.”

Comfort now and pain later, that was how her life went -- 

Jyn let the sobs come out, and opened the door with a trembling hand.

Any moment now, there would be exploding blinding light shattering down her nerves -- 

Any moment now, there would be slithering words wrapped in slick untruths --

Any moment now: she curled herself into a ball, but she knew she couldn’t protect her fragile heart or her fragile mind -- 

“Can I?”

And the man who had left her, who had told her to leave, had long since stopped asking for her consent.

So this might not be him, she thought, and she looked up, watery vision, and the shape of a man, but not the man with whom she had shared a home and a life and a bed and too many lies and broken promises --

“This cowboy song is all I know,” that shape of a man was singing, and there were tears in his song, tears that fell onto her and mingled with her own.

“Cassian,” she said, at last, daring to believe, through the shock that was still catching like lightning in her mind.

“It’s me,” he said, affirming. “I came as soon as I heard.”

“It was all lies.” Fresh sobs mixed in with her words.

“That’s what they told me.”

“It hurts.”

Shame like brambles around her heart when she said the words.

But Cassian only said, “Then it hurts, and it will hurt, but some day it won’t hurt so much. Some day it will stop hurting.”

“I can’t believe in that -- I believe you but I don’t believe in that.”

And in response, she was expecting -- what was she expecting? That he would make light of her tears? That he would dismiss the fears that haunted her every step? That he would coddle her now, indulge her now, and then haul her back to that bed of her pain?

But all Cassian said was:

“Okay.”

She said his name again.

She didn’t want to take him as a promise, as an article of faith.

She just wanted a little kindness.

“Let it all out, querida, and when you can, if you need my help I’ll help.”

She raised her eyes to his, and saw his watery smile.

“Let me kiss you,” he was saying, as she stared at him and willed him to make sense.

She bent her head, and said, “Yes.”

The firm soft pressure of his mouth against the top of her head.

She clutched at him.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Prompt Fourteen: "shock" at [@rebelcaptainprompts](https://rebelcaptainprompts.tumblr.com/) over on Tumblr. 
> 
> I am also on tumblr myself -- look me up [@ninemoons42](https://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


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